


Falls County Felony

by burglebezzlement



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Crime, Gen, In the form of a crime map made by Mabel, and also county fairs, lots of crime
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-28
Updated: 2020-03-28
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:13:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23223055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/burglebezzlement/pseuds/burglebezzlement
Summary: Mabel's latest creation is the talk of the Falls County Fair. Stan just has to hope it isn't the talk of the law enforcement community as well.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 54
Collections: Worldbuilding Exchange 2020





	Falls County Felony

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wafflelate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wafflelate/gifts).



The grounds of the Falls County Fairgrounds are crowded with people. Manly Dan’s voice drifts over the crowd from the lumberjack competition area as Dipper walks down the midway, wondering if he might be able to win one of the stuffed jack-o-melons from the ring toss. He’s pretty sure he’s figured out the trick… maybe.

“Hey, dude!” Soos says, waving from the giant slide. Melody’s beside him, holding a deep-fried chorizo dog on a stick. “You wanna come on some rides with us?”

“I’d love to,” Dipper says. He’s got Grunkle Ford’s second journal with him, bookmarked at a page about the Falls County spookhouse ride, and a skeleton that Grunkle Ford suspected was inhabited by an invisible wizard ghost. Dipper’s not sure if the spookhouse at the far end of the fairgrounds is the same one Grunkle Ford rode all those years ago, but he’s got big plans to find out.

Big plans. Until Mabel appears beside him.

“Dipper!” Mabel exclaims. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you. You’re going to miss the opening of the Fancy Work and Baked Goods displays!”

“I… am?”

“But not now that I found you,” Mabel says, dragging him away from Soos and the rides. “Come on. I want to see how many blue ribbons I won!”

The inside of the Fancy Work barn is cool and shaded after the bright light outside, and there’s a faint scent of hot glue. Dipper shivers as his eyes adjust to the rows of crafts all around him.

“Look,” Mabel says, her voice hushed. “Look at the ribbons, Dipper!”

She dances around the barn, grinning widely as she examines the judging reports on each of her masterworks. “Everything did so well!”

“Congratulations, Mabel,” Dipper says. The Fancy Work barn isn’t Dipper’s natural habitat, but he’s proud of her. She works hard on her crafts, and it’s nice seeing her given recognition for her talents and creativity.

A tiny old lady with enormous glasses hugs Mabel. “I’m Miss Delphinia,” she tells Dipper. “Your sister here has given us hope for the crafting skills of a new generation. Nobody has won this many blue ribbons at the Falls County Fair since Miss Etta Newsome and her metamorphosing quilt-secateurs attacked all the other entries in 1947! And we made that against the rules in 1948.”

“Pshaw,” Mabel says, obviously pleased. “It wasn’t that hard once I realized that most categories didn’t even get one entry.”

It’s true. Mabel’s entries stand alone in multiple categories, including Best Radio Play Script, Best Macrame Plant Hanger, and Best Tatted Dress Collar. And Dipper doesn’t even want to know what Mabel found to scrimshaw.

“It wasn’t just that, young lady,” Miss Delphinia says, leading Mabel and Dipper to the center of the Fancy Work and Baked Goods barn. She points up to Mabel’s pièce de résistance. “This truly is the Best in Show.”

Dipper takes it in. He’s noticed Mabel working on all of these projects over the past month — how could he not? — but somehow, he hadn’t noticed any of the details of this particular work until now.

He swallows. “Uh, Mabel?”

Mabel puts a friendly arm around him. “Yes, my ribbon-less bro-bro?”

“Does Stan know about this?”

“Of course he does!” Mabel gazes up at it. “I had to ask him for so many more details on all of this.” 

“And… did you tell him why you were asking?”

Mabel gazes upwards at the work. “He saw me working on it.”

It’s some sort of wall-thing, or maybe a quilt-thing. Dipper doesn’t understand all the details about what’s a quilt and what’s a wall-hanging and what’s art, and Mabel’s never limited herself to one art form anyway. But the thing hanging in front of them is kind of puffy and mostly made of fabric, and it’s hanging from one of the beams of the barn, but probably it could hang on the wall.

It’s made from fabric, embroidery, huge stretches of glitter — all made into pictures of Stan, displayed across a map of the United States, Canada, Mexico, and a little inset in one corner that shows the island of Madagascar, with a startlingly lifelike felt and yarn depiction of Stan with lemurs stuffed into his pants. 

Dipper takes it in. Maine shows Stan in a boat, pulling up a lobster trap while looking over his shoulder. In Illinois, he wears a scouting uniform, holding one hand up in the Scouting Oath, while his fingers are crossed behind his back. In San Jose, Stan’s climbing down a rope, halfway down the wall of a fancy Victorian mansion, a crystal ball in a bag on his back.

It’s every crime, every misdemeanor, every felony — every scam and grift and flim-flam and bamboozle that Stan has told Dipper and Mabel about over the years, all indexed by location and worked in intricate stitches.

“I even included the time at the Alamo,” Mabel says. “See, with the glow-in-the-dark embroidery floss?”

Dipper looks at Texas and shudders. He still wishes Stan hadn’t told them that story.

“That’s amazing!” someone says from behind them.

Dipper turns to see a girl about their own age, holding a smart phone up to photograph the map. “I’m going to put this on my Instapin!” she says.

“Mabel,” Dipper says, turning back to his sister.

“It’s nothing!” Mabel says. “I’m sure nobody is looking at mixed-media county fair projects for evidence in old criminal cases.” Her eyes drift over to the map and the ribbon and yarn Stan breaking to a bank in Iowa. “I’m sure. It’s fine.”

* * *

Back at the Shack, the fair over, Soos studies the map. “Why is there so little crime in Florida, Mr. Pines?”

Stan clears his throat. “Turned out opening an alligator wrestling center was legal down there.”

“Oh, Stanley.” Grunkle Ford shakes his head, studying the map. “I suppose we should have known your crimes would catch up to you eventually.”

“Don’t feel left out, Grunkle Ford,” Mabel says. She points to Nevada on the map. “I included your crimes, too!”

Dipper squints. Now that he knows, there is something very Ford-like about the shape of the glasses embroidered onto the figure breaking into a high-security door. 

“So why is Dipper so worried?” Stan asks. 

“It’s all over Instapin,” Dipper says. The girl’s photo has gone viral on the Instapin boards for quilting, embroidery, and other hand-crafts. It seems to have been mostly due to a war over whether Mabel’s work qualified as “mixed-media fabric wall-hanging” or “embroidery art quilt,” a debate Dipper has no interest in following, but the upshot is that Mabel’s work has been spread across the online craftosphere.

“What’s that? A bulletin board? Where is it? I can steal a bulletin board.” Stan peers at Delaware. “Heh. Maybe more than one.”

“It doesn’t work like that,” Dipper says. “It’s in the cloud, Grunkle Stan.”

Stan squints up at the sky suspiciously.

“Not like that,” Dipper says. He takes a deep breath. “Look, at least some of this stuff has to be outside of the statute of limitations, right?”

Ford nods approvingly. “Good thinking, Dipper.”

Mabel pulls out a pad of paper. “So which states care about cattle rustling?”

“All of them.” Dipper groans. “Mabel, it’s all of them.”

* * *

It takes them all afternoon, working with Stan’s ancient computer on AOL dial-up (Dipper thought AOL had stopped providing home internet service years ago, but not in Gravity Falls) and a pocket crime handbook that Stan just happens to have on hand, but they manage to check every single crime on Mabel’s map. There’s a few — including Ford’s little trespassing incident at Area 51 — that haven’t aged off the books. But Dipper’s relieved to find that the statutes of limitations on most of Stan’s crimes outside of Gravity Falls have long since passed.

“Selling fake chupacabra repellant?” Ford asks, looking at Mabel’s handiwork. “You know, I have a recipe for a real chupacabra repellant. It’s just tricky finding Arcturian basil in this part of the multiverse.”

Dipper looks down at the master list. “So cross off releasing a cobra into a drive-in movie theater concession stand to steal popcorn in Poughkeepsie, the mermaid impersonation scam in Arizona, smuggling counterfeit Barmy Beanies into British Columbia… is that actually all of it?”

Stan looks at the list pensively. “I must be going soft in my old age.”

“Oh, don’t worry, Grunkle Stan,” Mabel says. She pulls out another piece of embroidery, which has a half-finished car with outlines sketched inside for Stan and a bear. “I’m already working on my entry for next year’s fair, just to show all the crime around Gravity Falls that I couldn’t fit on the big map.”

Dipper starts to protest, and then sits back in defeat. If Blubbs and Durland haven’t arrested Stan yet, it’s not like a map of his crimes is likely to change anything.


End file.
